


Once, A Glimpse

by kali_asleep



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Addiction, Dubious Consent, F/M, Love, Love Triangle, M/M, Sexual Content, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-24
Updated: 2012-04-24
Packaged: 2017-11-04 05:46:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kali_asleep/pseuds/kali_asleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John couldn't put him back together again, not after that kind of fall. </p><p>“Sherlock!” Moriarty screams. John leaves. His life at Baker Street begins and ends with the same word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once, A Glimpse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QuinnAnderson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuinnAnderson/gifts).



> Hi everyone! 
> 
> This fic of mine is the proud bearer of a number of firsts for me: first posted (read: completed) Sherlock story, first time writing angst, first time one-shot, and first time writing some male-on-male goodness. Despite my newness, I hope you'll all enjoy this! It was a bit of an emotional thrill ride for me... so yea >_>
> 
> I'd like to lavish all of my love and praise on the beautiful and talented QuinnAnderson, who not only beta'd this story and mildly britpicked it, but sent me an invitation to AO3 in the first place. If it weren't for her, you'd all have to suffer through my slapdash commas and willy-nilly semi-colons, and trust me, no one wants that (I should have had her take a look at this bit...). She is my constant muse (and best candidate for long-term life partner) and the reigning queen of slash; if you haven't read her own Sherlock work "Never the Twain Shall Meet", do so - you'll be in for a treat. Two weeks until it's you, me, a bottle of vodka, and our Cumbernest, darling.
> 
>  
> 
> Since I've been out of practice for a while I'm not sure if this is obligatory, but just in case, I'll post my disclaimer: I do not own or claim to own the television series "Sherlock" or its associated characters and plot lines. This is merely a piece of fan-based fiction. :)
> 
> Title taken from the title of Maximo Park's "Once, A Glimpse". Inspiration for the story driven by Maximo Park's "Limassol", both of which I would highly recommend.
> 
> Edit: 4/24/12 for basic formatting

Gravity is contemplated thousands of years ago by the ancient Greeks; they determine that the Earth exists at the center of the universe and so all objects will fall towards it in straight lines. John moves towards Sherlock as Sherlock moves towards the ground. Sherlock is dead by the time John reaches him, and John suddenly feels himself being pulled back. He collapses on a worn piece of sidewalk and stares at the blood, dumbfounded that there was ever a force acting on him that was not Sherlock.

For three years, John has nightmares. They begin with Sherlock on top of him and end with Sherlock’s broken bones buried under his feet.

_“John.”_

Tears, slick and salty, prove an unacceptable barrier between Sherlock’s lips and his. John pulls away and wipes his face with the back of his fist before slamming it into Sherlock’s jaw. The crack is rewardingly real, as is the blood that pumps through John’s entire body. He wonders for a moment if it was truly Sherlock who had been lifeless this entire time.

 

The first symptom manifests in the form of terrible, gut-wrenching nightmares. John listens to the anguished cries coming from the room downstairs for weeks before he determines to ask his flatmate about them. Sherlock, as usual, evades his questions with such an acute hauteur that John spends the rest of the day utterly giddy over just how perfect one man can be.

The other symptoms slip by, few even drawing John’s attention for more than a minute: glassy eyes, twitching lips, and a peculiar jumpiness that occurs when John touches him unexpectedly. John relishes in touching Sherlock, and never considers that the other man’s kiss might simply be a means of keeping him from questioning.

Sherlock stays quiet for hours on end. It is not his old, frantic quiet, the one punctuated by loud crashes and the strangled whine of violins. Eventually, Sherlock breaks the silence with his body; his joints creak and his feet bump softly against the wood floor as his slinks, cat-like and sullen, to his room.

It is not until John is on the train to Manchester that he realises Sherlock is not well. He is on his way to a three day medical conference, and wonders why his diagnosis couldn’t have formed earlier. The final clue, of course, is a text from Sherlock, who had been deeply wrapped in a case involving a ransomed teenager and a serial murderer when John left the flat. 

_Girl dead.  
Yard plans to pay  
ransom to keep it  
from happening again.  
SH_

In the space of seventy characters, John finally sees Sherlock’s misery, his long burgeoning dissociation. Sherlock fails because he cares. Deep in the core of a man who has been brought back to life, something has been broken.

 

John hears the cries before he’s even opened the door. They are sharp and guttural and John’s hand fumbles with the key to the flat as the image of black hound rears in his mind, unbidden. The lock sticks. He takes a deep breath. The cries might be moans of fear; Sherlock experienced so many nightmares after his return. John tries the door again. It opens. As he crosses the threshold he remembers the first night Sherlock opened the door to his bedroom and padded to John’s bed. John held him for the first time then, the once-detective quivering in his arms. 

“Sherlock?” The first word is always the most important; if anything, Sherlock has taught him the value of _le mot juste_. He stills, but the moans continue. The cries are underwritten by a heavy pulse that beats against the walls and vibrates through the floorboards. Rhythmic. _Subtext is everything, John,_ Sherlock once muttered during a case. _The space between the words is just as vital as the words themselves_. Metal skitters across wood and John’s keys hide under the side table. John’s heart pounds harder; the banging from across the flat seems to take it as a cue.

“Sherlock?” He is everywhere, and John knows it; he is the wallpaper and the empty tea cups and the Union Jack pillow and the refrigerator and for the first time John realizes that Sherlock is not alone. 

The door to Sherlock’s bedroom juts into the hall, akimbo and challenging John to enter.

“Sherlock?”

Unlike Sherlock, the door yields to John’s touch. For the first time in a long time, John’s inability to deduce is inconsequential.

The last thing John notices are the needles. The floor is littered with them, the sheet of syringes punctuated only by small piles of abandoned clothing. Penultimately, he takes in the sharp tang of sweat, blood, sex and what is very likely stomach bile. 

The very first thing he sees is Jim Moriarty, returned from the dead and thrust deep inside Sherlock Holmes. Moriarty sees John as soon as he enters—probably heard him from the very time he entered the flat—and gives him a face-splitting grin. He is naked, and beneath him Sherlock is all taut muscle and flush skin, long and stringy and incredibly strung out. Sherlock is cast in shadow, his body in profile. A dark head of hair interrupts the fine line of Sherlock’s neck: Moriarty is running his tongue over well-defined cheekbones, is nipping at the other man’s ears. Moriarty is slowly fucking Sherlock, teasing his cock out with such deliberate strokes that John knows he is meant to see this. The floor beneath John’s feet continues to pulse. 

“Oh look, darling,” Moriarty hisses, hips rising and falling. “It appears as though the good doctor has decided to join us.”

Sherlock’s head flops toward the door, and John is momentarily trapped by the wildness of the man’s normally icy eyes. Sweat beads along Sherlock’s brow, and a fleck of spittle dots the corner of his mouth, but in that moment all John really takes in are his eyes: red and glazed and bulging, as if desperately trying to escape their sockets. Sherlock’s prick is angrily smashed between the two moving bodies. Hard, it twitches as Moriarty enters him. 

“J-John,” Sherlock groans. His attempts to speak are punctuated by Moriarty’s thrusts, which are getting harder with each passing second. Moriarty’s grin grows wider, so sharp and toothy that for an instant John glimpses the skull beneath the man’s skin. 

“John!” Sherlock is practically screaming now; Moriarty is giggling and panting and fucking.

John takes a step back. His hands are shaking. 

“Don’t you fucking dare say his name!” Moriarty shouts, placing his hands over Sherlock’s neck. John fumbles for the door. 

“Jooooohn!” Sherlock’s eyes roll back in his head. John sees panicked horses with white eyes, frothing at the mouth. 

“Don’t. You. Fucking. _DARE!_ ” 

Sherlock looks utterly ravaged. Sherlock does not stop, does not say no. John pulls himself through the door and then slams it shut. Even through the wood he can hear Moriarty cackle.

“You are mine,” the criminal pants, “and no one else’s. No one will ever fuck you like me.”

The stairs creak as John tumbles up them. He is blindly grabbing at things: door knob, suitcase, gun. With the precision of a man who spent much of his life crafting delicate scalpel incisions under the steady fire of artillery, John quickly excises his small world from 221B. Everything he was before Sherlock fits into a box, a backpack, and a single ragged suitcase. It is all he takes back down the stairs. 

The low timbre that is Sherlock’s voice begs for more, and it spreads through the walls like cancer. Moriarty responds as John passes Sherlock’s door – the pounding gets louder. Sherlock’s voice melts in delirious pleasure. Standing in the sitting room for the last time, John feels something crumble. He can’t tell if it’s inside him or underneath him, but it falls apart nonetheless. He tries to dial up a cab, but his fingers constantly miss the right buttons. The keys to the flat peek out from under the table. They are lonely and cold and utterly abandoned. 

“Sherlock!” Moriarty screams. John leaves. His life at Baker Street begins and ends with the same word.

 

John’s things fit neatly in the little room Greg’s son uses when he visits.

 

_I need a case. Tell Lestrade to  
get in touch as soon as  
he gets home.  
SH_

_Meet me at St. Bart’s  
in twenty minutes.  
SH_

_I’m bored.  
SH_

_Come home._  
SH

_I’ve done something  
wrong.  
SH_

_John, come home.  
SH_

_Lestrade refuses to give  
me a case.  
SH_

_Talk to me.  
SH_

_Talk to me, please.  
SH_

_John.  
SH_

_Please.  
SH_

_John, I need you.  
SH_

_No._

 

John spots the dark shock of curls long before he reaches the steps to Greg’s flat. Sherlock stands at the door, long fingers jolting from his pockets to his lips then tangling through his hair, pulling madly at it before retracing their path back down: hair, lips, pockets. He is clearly high on something; with a clinical eye, John tentatively diagnoses the symptoms of cocaine abuse. Sherlock rubs at his nose before returning to his endless fidgeting. Dark circles have carved their way under the detective’s eyes. It is unusually warm for an early London spring, yet John tugs his jacket closer to his shuddering body. He shoves his fists into his pockets and turns around. 

 

“Mine. Mine, mine, mine.”

Moriarty calls John from a blocked number. It is three in the morning. John listens silently as Moriarty moans on the other end. 

“You were always. So ordinary.”

His eyes are squeezed shut, but that does not press out the image of Sherlock, so beautiful, lithe and twisting beneath – or perhaps on top – of Moriarty. Sherlock, John knows, is always electrifying, a live wire John made the mistake of picking up.

 

A week later there comes a soft knock at Greg’s door. Amidst the sounds of the spring squall it is almost lost. In the middle of turning a page, John happens to look up from the paper just in time to see a figure wavering at Lestrade’s door. He recognizes that the shape is too short to be Sherlock, but the norepinephrine hits his heart almost instantaneously, making his pulse roar in his ears. Newspaper still in hand, he stands to open the door. _It’s not him, John tells his trembling hands._

Instead, it is Molly Hooper. She is practically swallowed by her rain-soaked lab jacket, and as John looks at her he realizes it is impossible to tell if she is crying or wet. She shoots him a watery smile. 

“I didn’t mean to bother you, I just…” 

She starts again, vaguely gesturing toward his paper. 

“If you’re busy—I must be interrupting your reading…”

John chuckles. The sound seems to startle them both. He gives the paper a small shake. “Wasn’t really reading it. I couldn’t even tell you what the weather was supposed to be like.”

His jumper is wet and cold, the sudden weight of Molly Hooper taking him by surprise. Her forehead knocks into his nose awkwardly – they are nearly the same height – and her arms wrap around him tightly, leaving long, soaked patches. She is most certainly crying. John’s arms find their way around her small frame. For a few long heartbeats they simply stand there, shivering together. 

“This is bloody stupid,” he finally mutters. “Come inside.”

Molly nods and disengages. John lets her in, takes her coat, and guides her to the sofa.

“Tea?” His voice is gentle, but Molly has regained her composure. She tips her chin up slightly, and a raindrop that had been poised to fall from her nose slides away. Her eyes are red and bright, though she is no longer crying. 

“No, thank you, but a towel would be lovely.” John nods, but puts a kettle on as he comes back from the bathroom. He is cold, and pulling off his wet jumper does little to help. He imagines he has felt this way for a while and is only now noticing. Molly runs the towel over her hair, squeezing out some of the dampness, and then passes it over her face. She stops for a moment and takes a deep breath, preparing herself to face him before she lets the towel slip away.

“He came by the lab today,” she starts. Although John has not spoken to Molly in weeks, he knows in that moment that she knows; the name is as painful for her to say as it would be for John to hear. He struggles but manages a measured nod. Molly lets out a shuddering breath, and everything follows with it.

“I hadn’t seen him in almost three weeks – and the last time he came in he was so sullen, you know? – and then as if out of nowhere, there he was, bursting through the lab doors like an absolute maniac.” She pauses. “More of a maniac than usual. He was screaming and panting and going on about corpses and cases and wasn’t making a bit of sense. At first I thought maybe he was just in one of his fits. So he tried to start some sort of experiment, but his hands were shaking so badly… I could hear the glass clinking over and over again from across the lab.”

John looks away because he can see exactly what Molly is telling him, and because he suddenly finds it hard to picture Sherlock and look at her at the same time. In his peripheral, he glimpses Molly passing a hand through her hair. He sees Sherlock outside of the door to Lestrade’s flat, pulling anxiously at his curls. John shuts his eyes.

“Broke a beaker of hydrochloric acid and didn’t seem to notice. He was… definitely on drugs. I know he used to inject heroin, but this was totally different. He was in another world. And then…”

Molly truly pauses for the first time. Opening his eyes, John sees her giving him a level stare. How much she’d changed from the transparent, frantic creature she’d been when they’d first met. John nods, though he is never ready – will never be ready.

“He started asking about you. More like demanding, really, to know where you were, if we’d been in contact, what you were doing. I told him I hadn’t seen you and that he needed to calm down, but he got up real close and started shouting at me, yelling that I needed to tell him everything because I always knew – I’ve no clue what he meant by that, of course. And then his whole face seized up and he – he just started crying and shouting that he needed you, that he needed ‘his John’.”

John sucks in a harsh breath but says nothing.

“He was shaking so badly, John, and yelling and I thought he was about to do something – to really do something bad – he just had this look on his face. I couldn’t tell…”

Molly bites her bottom lip and furrows her brow, reaching for the right words. 

“I couldn’t tell if he was the destroyed or the destroyer.” She giggles, but it is off pitch and not right. “Fat lot of sense that makes, Molly,” she mutters. Straightening, she continues.

“So I called security. He resisted, saying he belonged in the lab and that they had no right to make him leave. Imperious as always. He caused some trouble on the way down – apparently broke one of the boy’s noses – and so Detective Inspector Lestrade got called in. I saw them, out the window. I’d never seen the D.I. so angry before. He cuffed Sherlock and drove him off. And the whole time, all I could think was ‘His eyes. They’re so broken.’”

Molly lets out another not-right giggle. John opens his mouth to say something, but is stopped by the sudden smell of smoke. In the kitchen, the metal bottom of the abandoned kettle warps on the burner. John rushes out of the living room, eyes burning.

 

John is already in bed when Greg comes home. He hears the detective’s coat and boots hit the floor, accompanied by a heavy sigh. The other man’s footsteps beat their way to the kitchen, where Lestrade pauses to grab a beer, and then to the door of what has now become John’s room. 

“I heard Molly came by a bit earlier,” he says. John doesn’t ask how Greg knows that he is awake. 

“I ended up arresting Sherlock for possession,” he continues, “As well as for carrying an un-licensed firearm.” John startles in his bed as Greg shifts at the door. The detective’s voice is rough and worn, and John can practically see the lines etching themselves across his face.

“John, I went ahead and put in a non-molestation order against Sherlock, in your name.”

“But, he hasn’t even come near – I didn’t – is that even legal?” John sputters. His voice, unused since Molly left, cracks slightly at the end. Greg’s head settles on the door with a light thunk. 

“I truly think he’s gone off the deep-end this time, John. I’ve seen him at what I thought was his worst, but it doesn’t even come close to how he is now. I don’t know what’s happened to him-”

“It’s Moriarty,” John interjects. The idiocy of keeping it quiet for so long hits him hard. “He’s alive.”

Greg swears loudly. “Moriarty and a hell of a lot of cocaine, then. The point is, Sherlock isn’t the same man. Ever since… whatever happened between you two, I can’t even say for sure if he’s a man at all anymore… Not that I blame you, mate,” he adds quickly. 

“Moriarty, alive.” Greg’s head hits the door a few more times. “And here I thought I might get a decent night’s sleep.”

 _So did I_ , John wants to say, but he stays silent, knowing there is no place for lies between himself and Greg. Greg trundles away after a minute or so. John lies awake all night, still and silent, and thinks of life without Sherlock Holmes. The ceiling of his little room is flat and featureless, black but for the occasional flickers of weak light that blink from the headlights of passing cars. _Yes, very much like that._

 

_John, please let me  
see you.  
SH_

He wakes up to the beep of his message tone. The light from his phone momentarily blinds him, but even after his eyes adjust he still has trouble reading the words. For a moment he considers sitting up, pulling on a jumper, and walking to Baker Street. Then, he remembers that Sherlock is no longer at Baker Street (Evicted by Mrs Hudson. _He’s a danger to himself_ , she had whispered to John over the phone). The question is bitingly ever-present: Where, then, could he return to?

_I can get away from  
Jim for a few hours.  
Chinese?  
SH_

John is shaking under his sheets. He doesn’t care if Sherlock is lucid or drugged out of his mind. He doesn’t care if Sherlock wants him, or needs him. He doesn’t care that Sherlock had once held him, had once promised him life, and danger, and companionship. He doesn’t care that Sherlock threw him away. John doesn’t care that he is powering down his phone, that he is shutting off the light that once lit the space between him and the man he loves.

 

The first time he kisses Molly, John is thinking of Sherlock. They started taking lunches together a few days after Molly first showed up at Greg’s flat, and it had quickly gone from an occasional meeting to an almost daily ritual. They’d meet at restaurants and cafes between St. Bart’s and the clinic John worked at, or, if one of them had the day off, would go for coffee or take-away when the other had finished. Molly is smart and warm, a tight cluster of nervous energy that radiates giggles and unexpectedly straightforward opinions. John realizes he likes her as soon as he notices Sherlock sitting a few tables away from them in the café, poorly disguised as an old sailor. _Sherlock is here because he is always a step ahead_ , John thinks as he watches Molly from over his menu. She is cupping her chin in her hand and staring out into the street, eyes distant, a smile on her face that John instantly categorizes as _sad_. Sherlock, too, is watching Molly between sips of tea. The man’s brows, obnoxiously grey and furry, furrow. 

After the waitress takes their order, Molly begins to talk, unconsciously rambling in the way she does (a way that, every once in a while, reminds John of Sherlock). 

“He came in the lab again today…” Molly clearly hasn’t noticed he is sitting a few feet away, shoulders slumped under a heavy wool jacket. “Asking about you. And me.” She shakes her head violently, bits of the end of her ponytail getting caught in her mouth. John feels a bit of warmth unfurling in his gut. 

“He’s so broken. He’s not going to get better, I don’t think. You were the only one who ever made him right and now he’s gone off the shag the same madman who basically pushed him off a _bloody building_.” Molly’s voice gets higher and tighter as she speaks, and her eyes crush closed in frustration.

John sees Molly for what she is: a doctor, like him, the person singularly responsible for resurrecting Sherlock. She is the only other person John knows who has unquestioningly given her life for Sherlock’s, and now she is watching as every art of her craft comes undone. Her own creation is destroying itself. 

Her pride and her love bloom over her face in a shower of tears, and suddenly John is half-standing to lean over the table. Sherlock’s teacup cracks loudly as it hits the table, but John has told himself for so long that he doesn’t care and he presses tiny kisses into Molly’s face, awkwardly clutching her face and knocking over the salt with his elbow and moving from her forehead to her eyes to her nose and finally to her mouth. For a heartbeat Molly stiffens, but then she is kissing back, tentatively raising her lips to his. He remembers his first kiss with Sherlock: it was hard and angry, but no more powerful than this. The display lasts only a few moments. John pulls away, an apology ready to wash away the taste of her on his lips. Molly clasps one of his hands in hers and grips it tightly. They share the tremors running through their hands, because Molly understands, and so does John. Sherlock is gone when John finally looks over, though the waitress is complaining about the smashed teacup. 

 

Molly and John are sitting on the sofa in Greg’s flat, watching some terrible American forensics show. They are close but do not touch as Molly and John alternate pointing out the flaws of the show’s medical examiner; “Unless Americans have paint for blood, there is no way a motor accident would cause that kind of bruising,” she quips, sounding as if a mannequin with too much makeup were the worst offense in the world. 

They both jolt forward when Molly’s phone suddenly rings. It’s fairly late, and John knows Molly does not get very many calls.

“Blocked number,” she mutters before keying the ‘Talk’ button.

“What. Did you do. To my toy?”

“Jim,” Molly breathes, dropping the phone as if it had grown teeth.

“WHAT DID YOU DO? YOU BROKE MY FAVOURITE TOY, YOU MISERABLE BITCH.” 

Moriarty is screaming now, loud enough that John can hear every word through the tiny speaker.

“WHAT GOOD IS A BROKEN TOY?”

There is a sudden scuffle on the other end, followed by heavy panting. Another voice ghosts from the speaker. 

“No…”

It is Sherlock, and he is cut off by a loud crunch, the sound of bone crushing into bone. Molly’s hand darts out and grabs the phone, immediately ending the call. 

John shuts off the television and quietly calls Greg. While he waits for the inspector to pick up, John pulls Molly into a one-armed embrace. They are safer, Greg decides, at his flat. John learns that the block Greg’s flat is on is regularly patrolled, and since Sherlock disappeared with Moriarty, the flat itself has been under Mycroft Holmes’s surveillance. 

 

Wordlessly, John pulls Molly onto his twin bed. He first curls his arms, and then his body around her. Her breath comes out in shallow, fast huffs, still reacting to the phone call. Beneath his hands he feels her blood pulsing. She is warm and not at all like Sherlock, whose breaths had been perfectly measured to match John’s, had been calculated to help the ex-soldier fall asleep. 

Her hair teases his face, makes his nose itch. He is still cold, but that night he wakes up every few hours, the feeling of sharp heat spreading slowly through his fingers.

 

Months pass, and Sherlock does not appear again. A drastic upsurge of the drugs trade leaves South America roiling in violence, and on the continent the sheet music of famous deceased composers is stolen from museums and private collectors. Still, it seems all very, very far away.

 

John begins to love Molly because Molly loves Sherlock. It is an axiom to which the corollary is this: Molly begins to love John because John loves Sherlock.

They are the rubble of moons that once circled the only planet with life on its surface. After it collapsed they drifted along, aimlessly swirling around the empty space created by its demise. Billions of years later they passed near enough to each other that gravity caught and they began to pull each other in. Slowly colliding to form a whole.

 

John is waiting for a call. He had taken the entire day off, claiming a stomachache in the morning and sending a worried Molly on her way. He sits on the sofa in the living room and waits. He is cold in a way he has not been in months but refrains from getting up and pulling on a jumper.

Last night, on his way back from a late shift at the clinic, his phone buzzed.

_I’m sorry.  
SH_

and then, a moment later

_Goodbye.  
SH_

His hands shake and the key misses the hole a few times before he enters the flat he shares with Molly. She is thankfully asleep, dead to the night and smelling faintly of formaldehyde after what was undoubtedly a long day at work. John stayed up all night, listening to his own breathing. 

The call comes some hours later. It’s Greg, and he sounds utterly wrecked.

“Mycroft refuses to acknowledge the existence of his brother,” he says. “I-I’d make the I.D. myself, but legally… I’m so sorry, I…”

“The evidence doesn’t exist until I see it, Greg,” John says, and it sounds stupid because they both know it isn’t true.

 

He is very cold. 

Molly is speaking. Her voice is jittery, all over the place: she was the examiner on duty when they brought in Sherlock’s body.

“Bruising around the eyes as well as the irregular set of the cartilage indicates that his nose was repeatedly fractured…”

John’s eyes move over Sherlock’s prostrate form. It is the first time he has seen the man naked, and something heavy and bitter settles on his tongue. Sherlock is as pale as ever, and while his body is more skeletal than John has ever seen it, there is still a split second where, underneath the harsh fluorescent light of the morgue, Sherlock could be alive. John lets go a breath he didn’t realise he was holding – Sherlock does not slide off of the gurney and tell them, with an agitated flourish of the hands, just how idiotic and _boring_ they are. 

“Collapsed veins in the left arm point to regular heroin intake combined with suspected cocaine usage, though cause of death was not overdose.”

Latex snaps over his hands as he pulls on a pair of gloves. The pull of the gloves on his skin is a welcome reminder that he can, in fact, feel. John approaches the gurney where Sherlock lays, obviously dead. He gently takes Sherlock’s chin in one hand, and allows his thumb to stroke the sharp line of one of Sherlock’s cheekbones. It moves down and traces the jaw, darts over the lips. Even after so many months without contact, John’s body is confused at the lack of warmth radiating from the man’s skin, and struggles to keep the long ignored ball of want in his gut from unraveling.

Sherlock’s curls are matted to the side of his head with sweat and blood. 

“The bullet wound extending from the left temple to the right has been listed as the most likely cause of death.” 

Molly is taking great shuddering breaths, every muscle in her face twisted in agony. 

“Victim has been positively identified as Sherlock Holmes, thirty-five years old.”

She is weeping, quiet crying punctuated by a handful of escaped sobs. In a distant corner of his mind John wants to comfort her, but his hand still grasps Sherlock’s face and he cannot pull away.

The entry and exit wounds are remarkably precise, and John (though he would have done so with lesser evidence) immediately eliminates suicide. Sherlock had never been as proficient at shooting with his left hand, and the precision combined with high angle at which the bullet had entered his skull leaves little doubt in John’s mind that his killer had been a well-trained sniper.

Greg re-enters the morgue. John moves his hand from Sherlock’s head and pulls himself nearer to Molly, who continues going through the motions, examining every inch of the corpse of the man they loved. A half-formed ‘I’m sorry’ dies on Greg’s lips as he sees the two of them. The inspector, too, has been crying, and does little to hide it.

“They found him in a posh flat some blocks south of here, collapsed on the ground next to another deceased person immediately identified as James Moriarty.” Greg catches John’s look. 

“I checked, many times. It was him. The whole place was a wreck: needles and weaponry everywhere, furniture upended, clothes and computers in piles. They found Sherlock with a gun in his hand, the bullets of which matched what they found in Moriarty’s chest.”

_He’s dead. He’s dead._

__

“The higher-ups want to label it a murder-suicide and close the case as quickly as possible… The publicity on it will be outrageous if news gets out and will probably ruin a lot of careers.”

“But of course it wasn’t a suicide, was it?” John’s voice startles himself with its clarity. “Moriarty must have had a sniper on him at all times. He knew eventually that Sherlock would break… for once he just wasn’t quick enough.” Every part of his body suddenly feels like it’s burning as Sherlock’s name passes up his throat. John remembers the last time he said his name.

Greg nods. “The first team sent in noted that one of the windowpanes had been shattered, with the glass found on the inside, and even our most remedial of homicide investigators recognize the holes made by a high-powered rifle. Sherlock didn’t kill himself…” the man trails off, unspoken _but_ permeating the room. Sherlock had known long before. Under John’s arm, Molly has mostly stilled, though she takes slow deep breaths from between her hands. Greg fishes something out of his jacket’s pocket and holds it out to John. 

“He clearly didn’t want to live, John. I didn’t read it, but no one leaves letters like this around if they don’t expect to die. He’d set it out in plain sight right before he killed Moriarty.” Greg’s voice is stiffly professional, as if he is putting every effort into regaining his composure.

John takes the envelope. On the front in dark pencil is a single word: _John_.

In that short, arched scrawl, John sees a million things: the pounding of feet on asphalt, unhindered by canes or limps; a blinding array of words perched over head of wild hair; bullet holes and a painted smile; the contraction of chests in laughter or exhaustion; the jaw of a wolf, the eyes of a horse, the back of a cat; and, finally, the rocky surface of a moon that grows dim without the reflection of the sun.


End file.
